Late and Post Soviet Literature

“Though its primary purpose, wonderfully fulfilled, is to serve as a core text for those teaching and studying contemporary Russian history, politics, culture, society and of course literature, this volume should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand and experience vicariously the shock-therapy of Russia’s recent identity crises. Primary texts by a number of the best-known and most important contemporary prose writers and poets (Petrushevskaya, Sorokin, Bykov, Rubinshtein, Fanailova and others) are supplemented by critical studies by a number of leading scholars of the latest instantiations of some of Russia’s “accursed questions”. An exhilarating, sometimes exhausting guide to the passionate intensities and terrible beauties of post-Soviet culture.” —Andrew Reynolds, University of Wisconsin|“This long-needed volume sets out an ambitious goal for itself—“to capture the multiple voices and meanings that have emerged in the last several decades of cultural change in Russia”—and fulfills it in innovative ways. Its combination of primary and secondary sources, its editors’ skilled selection of authors and texts, and its impressive topical and chronological scope should make this reader an indispensable resource for students, teachers, and scholars of contemporary Russian culture.” —Seth Graham, University College London